


all that and more

by friday



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Reality Show, Body Modification, M/M, Produce 101 - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-25
Updated: 2019-01-25
Packaged: 2019-10-14 09:44:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17506238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/friday/pseuds/friday
Summary: "You know," the other trainee says, shrinking slightly in his seat. "You. Good company, good skills, handsome face. You’ll get all the fans’ votes for sure."(Or: Jaehyun was made to be the perfect idol. Sicheng makes him even better.)





	all that and more

**Author's Note:**

  * For [seungmin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/seungmin/gifts).
  * Inspired by [if i'm all that](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16970694) by [raincheck (seungmin)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/seungmin/pseuds/raincheck). 



Their first night in the dorms, after the camera crew filming their unpacking finally leaves and after they’ve actually unpacked, not just brandished their most personal and sentimental effects for show, Jaehyun lies awake.

As a result, he’s alert when the knock on the door comes, just loud enough that Mark in the next bed stirs, his covers twisting around his legs.

Jaehyun quickly climbs out of bed, padding over to the door to pull it open. He comes face-to-face with another trainee, a cameraman behind him looking slightly disappointed that it’s just Jaehyun, no late night drama for the cameras. _Sorry_ , Jaehyun mentally apologizes to the trainee in front of him. That was a few less seconds of airtime he would have.

“Hi,” he says, voice barely above a whisper. “Are you our fourth roommate?”

The trainee in front of him nods mutely, holding up his luggage. “Customs,” he says, belatedly. There’s a rounded hesitancy to his words that Jaehyun recognizes as a Chinese accent.

“Well, have a good night,” the cameraman says, putting his camera down.

“Night,” Jaehyun and his new roommate whisper-chorus together, before closing the door and stepping inside.

In the stillness of their dorm room, broken only by the whistle of Mark’s breath, Jaehyun gets a good look at the new guy. A quick catalog of the digestible features: well-shaped eyes, skin that’s going red and dry around an unobjectionable nose, a full mouth. A handsome face, rather than a pretty one—though plenty pretty too, of course. Blue duffel, black roller suitcase. Jeans cuffed at the ankle, white sneakers. If Jaehyun passed him on the street, he would look twice.

“Um, is that…” the trainee says, gesturing into the dark of the room, and Jaehyun blinks, remembering his manners.

“Right, that’s you,” he says. “Sorry, we chose bunks already, we didn’t know when you’d come. If it doesn’t work for you, we can switch in the morning.”

The new trainee fixes his slightly unnerving gaze onto Jaehyun, and there’s a beat before he answers, processing his words.

“Thank you,” he says, setting his suitcase and duffel bag down by the open bunk. “This is fine.”

 

 

 

It was an honor to be tapped for Produce 101, but it was a warning, too. It meant his company believed in him—or more likely, their own taste—enough that they thought him in at least the top eleven in a pool of a hundred. But also, you didn’t train for four years and get passed over for debut twice and not start to feel some itch of anxiety.

“Jaehyun,” management said, after they’d broken the news to him, Taeyong, and Mark, in a congratulatory tone that also contained a hint of a threat. “If you could stay for a quick chat.”

Jaehyun nodded, ignoring the looks Taeyong and Mark gave him as they stood up to leave.

The minute the door closed behind Mark, the management representative laced her fingers together. “Have you given the company’s offer some more thought? If we did it now, you’d have time to get used to everything before taping starts.”

Jaehyun adopted a look of vacant thoughtfulness, smiling so his dimple peeked through. She must’ve been new, because Jaehyun could see the exact moment the dimple worked on her, triggering a smile in turn.

“I have,” he said. “I promise I will have an answer for you soon. Please just give me some more time.”

 

 

 

There are some things that have always come easy to Jaehyun. The timber of his voice, his innate sense of rhythm. Charm, that intangible quality. All good skills to have in a survival program that’s being taped around the clock.

Jaehyun also knows that he, Taeyong, and Mark cut an impressive figure against the backdrop of the gathered trainees—the pedigree of their company, the synchronicity of their ranking performance, the clear-cut role each of them occupies. Of course, Jaehyun fantasizes of the three of them making it, one-two-three—pick an order, any order. 

“Must be nice, huh,” the trainee next to him on the pyramid says, apropos of nothing.

Jaehyun turns to look at him. He, Taeyong, and Mark have just finished performing, the euphoria of being the first group to receive all As not quite faded yet, adrenaline still coursing silver in his veins. The trainee is looking at him without meeting his eyes, and it’s obvious the comment was meant for him, to engage with or ignore.

Jaehyun’s in a good mood, feeling particularly invincible. He turns his body to him, away from Taeyong and Mark on his other side. “Excuse me?”

The trainee looks a little embarrassed. Jaehyun drops his eyes to the nametag pinned to his stomach. _Kim Dohyun_. Kim Dohyun flushes, but presses on.

“You know,” he says, shrinking slightly in his seat. “You. Good company, good skills, handsome face. You’ll get all the fans’ votes for sure.”

Jaehyun thought that was the point. “Thank you,” he says slowly, taking care not to let it dip into a drawl. “I hope so.”

 

 

 

In the end, management should’ve done away with the niceties, and just sent out a well-placed question from Mark to do their dirty work for them.

Jaehyun and Mark are waiting in the hallway for their meeting with management and publicity/marketing, to work out their 101 personality angles. Taeyong had volunteered to be first with a nervous flutter of his fingers, squaring his shoulders as if he were going to war and making them both laugh. But it felt like a hollow concern—Taeyong’s image was probably the easiest of all of theirs to discern. All they needed to strike gold was refine the gap between the charismatic performer onstage and the fussy, gentle person he was offstage.

“Hyung,” Mark said suddenly, fifteen minutes after the door had closed behind Taeyong. “Why do you want to be an idol?”

Jaehyun has been asked this question before. By his aunt’s husband’s sister, by his parents’ well-meaning friends, by classmates who couldn’t envision signing away years’ worth of free time for the nebulous promise of debut. He has an answer at the ready, of course, but this was Mark. Jaehyun didn’t want to be glib.

“Because I like it,” he finally said. “Because I don’t know how to do anything else.”

Mark nodded, expression serious. Suddenly, Jaehyun felt the need to say something, to puncture the tension of the moment. “No need to ask you, though. Our hardworking Mark Lee. You’re dedicated, I can tell.”

Mark frowned, reflexively, and Jaehyun realized he’d overshot. Taeyong chose that moment to step out of the office, looking exhausted but relieved.

Mark got up, looked at Jaehyun. “I am,” he said simply. “Are you, hyung?”

It stung.

Taeyong is older, but Jaehyun has seniority within the company—to the tune of four years to Taeyong’s three and Mark’s two, to be exact. Jaehyun’s held out for longer than most trainees at his level, and so when their company announced the most recent lineup for debut and his name wasn’t there, it had hurt.

And yet, when he looked at the trainees who were chosen to debut, their well-honed charms and machine-like precision, their flawless joints and perfect skin, well, it was easy to see how those boys were going to make millions of dreams come true.

“Jaehyun,” the management team representative said when he walked in. It was the same pretty noona from the other day, and so Jaehyun made sure to hold eye contact with her.

“I’m ready,” he said. “I want to do it.”

 

 

 

Besides Jaehyun’s first, late night interaction with their fourth roommate—Winwin, Jaehyun reminds himself—he hasn’t really had one since. Winwin’s always the first to wake, pulling on his kelly green D-rank uniform and slipping out the door before Jaehyun can suggest that they all walk to the cafeteria for breakfast. By the time he and Taeyong have cajoled Mark out of bed, Winwin’s always sitting at a table already with some of the other Chinese trainees, including a loud guy named Lucas Wong, who’d stunned them all during introductions with his height, the symmetry of his face, and the utter lack of pitch in his ensuing performance, and Qian Kun, who spoke Korean like a native, had a voice like an angel, and whose length of training time rivalled Jaehyun’s.

Jaehyun gets a chance when they do ranking reevaluations. He, Taeyong, and Mark had remained in A, wincing as three of their teammates were reassigned to B and C. A good amount of time passed before their door opened again, and Jaehyun would’ve missed seeing who it was if he hadn’t slipped into the spot right next to Jaehyun. And if it were not for that green sweatshirt, of course.

“Hi,” Winwin says, a bone in his knee popping as he sits.

“D to A, huh?” the guy on Jaehyun’s left says, reaching over Jaehyun’s head for a high-five, which Winwin gives to him. “Impressive.”

“Impressive,” Jaehyun echoes, and then turns to make eye contact with Winwin. “Hey, congratulations.”

Winwin looks pleased, already peeling the D sticker off his nametag. “Thank you,” he says. When he smiles, his face transforms.

 

 

 

When Jaehyun woke up, he didn’t feel the way he thought he would. That is, stronger, faster, and indestructible. Jaehyun 2.0. Instead, he just felt sore all over, his body one big bruise, smarting under the pressure of gravity.

The doctor took his vitals, cheerfully informed him he’d been under for eight hours, that the operation went well and everything should be back to normal soon, and did he have any questions?

“I do,” Jaehyun said, waiting for the nausea to subside when he raised his head and the room swam in front of him. “When do I start feeling… different?” _Better_ , his mind supplied.

The doctor laid a hand on Jaehyun’s shoulder. There was an earnestness to her that reminded Jaehyun of the management representative. “You _are_ different now,” the doctor said, gently and not unkindly. “Don’t worry, you’ll see.”

 

 

 

By the time the first elimination round comes around, they’ve fallen into a groove of expectations and results, all mostly determined by the press that followed the first episode: Taeyong’s face at the center of every article’s accompanying photo, the clip of Mark’s rap from when the mentors asked him to perform something else shooting to the top of the real time search results. Lucas tripping up the stairs as he returned to his seat before turning around and shooting finger guns directly into the nearest camera, bulls and eye. Their youngest contestant Lee Donghyuck’s wink, in GIF form, blinking out of a thousand Pann posts.

Jaehyun lands on a few lists of notable contestants, makes a name for himself as a top three visual. A video compilation of him helping some of the F-rank trainees with the title _Ah, doesn’t Produce 101 contestant Jung Jaehyun look exactly like my first love…? ㅠㅠ_ gets him some mileage on Pann, and a clip of himself saying, on loop, in English, _I lived in America for four years_ from his audition tape goes briefly viral—it’s not quite what Jaehyun would’ve wanted his legacy to be, to be honest.

It lands him at rank ten. When Jaehyun walks past the guys in the lower rows of the pyramid, he accepts their congratulations and the flash of jealousy in their eyes both. Winwin pulls him in for a hug when he walks by him at number twelve, just outside the ring of safety, surprising Jaehyun. They’ve become friends over the last few weeks of filming, especially when they realized they were the same age, but Winwin didn’t strike Jaehyun as a particularly physical person, always shying away when Nakamoto Yuta (#14) or Moon Taeil (#22) tried to throw an arm around him.

“Congratulations,” Winwin says after he pulls back, his face guileless and sincere.

There’s a pit hardening in Jaehyun’s stomach he can’t quite name. It’s twisting the objectively celebratory moment, throttling his ability to feel joy, and so he settles for squeezing Winwin’s hand. “Thank you,” he says, and the light in Winwin’s eyes dims slightly at the throat-clearing energy of Jaehyun’s response. That was the problem with ranking shows—any displeasure you expressed at where you ended up was a subtle diss to everyone who fell below you. He tries again: “Congratulations to you, too. Let’s go even higher next time.”

Taeyong and Mark go one-and-two, an unsurprising result. Jaehyun looks at Donghyuck in three, and envies.

 

 

 

The severity of his knee injury when it happened meant that Taeyong was the first of their trainee group to undergo the operation, and it was out of necessity more than choice. When he returned, Jaehyun pulled him in for a hug, before holding him at arm's length so he could run his eyes over Taeyong’s familiar face and body, looking for a tell.

There wasn’t, not really: that was the point. Taeyong threw himself back into working as hard as he always did during practice, as if he had something to prove and didn’t realize that the other trainees had long since forgiven him for being one of the few trainees to be scouted, not auditioned. There was a slight sense of hierarchy among the trainees, with the auditioned trainees expressing the faintest disdain for the scouted ones. But it was tempered by a complicated jealousy, too, because with enough hard work, anyone could learn to be a halfway decent singer, dancer, or rapper. Being scouted meant that you were, at the very least, already in possession of that all-important, amorphous quality: star power. After all, if you could make a trained professional out of your age and gender demographic stop in the middle of the street and double back based on the force of your presence alone, then, with some refinement, who was to say what you could be capable of?

The really miraculous thing about Taeyong was, besides his face and his aura, how little he had when he joined the company. Seventeen was by all accounts too old for anyone to be considered prodigious, but there was no other word for the seeming ease with which Taeyong picked up dance.

And so it felt doubly damning, when the news the gossip pipeline ran back in the aftermath of Taeyong’s injury was that, barring a miracle, his leg was never going to be the same ever again.

The choice was clear, if you could even call it that. Jaehyun would not envy anyone an injury like Taeyong’s, but sometimes he wishes his decision could’ve been so obvious.

 

 

 

Mark’s been spending a lot of time with Donghyuck as the weeks go on, and Jaehyun can see it deepening the furrow in Taeyong’s brow.

“Let it go,” Jaehyun murmurs, catching the back of Taeyong’s shirt before he can march himself and his tray to where Donghyuck and Mark are already sitting in the cafeteria, Mark almost slipping off the bench as he laughs at one of Donghyuck’s impressions. “Don’t hover.”

Taeyong looks offended, but obligingly sets his tray down next to Jaehyun. “I don’t hover. I’m just—we’re a team,” he says, blinking. “Why doesn’t Mark come to us?”

“I think it’s nice for him to talk to someone his own age who gets it,” Jaehyun says, picking at his seaweed salad. “And unless something happens, you’re about to be on the same team as Donghyuck, too.”

“We,” Taeyong says, around a mouthful of rice.

“What?”

Taeyong turns to look at Jaehyun, his gaze earnest and unwavering. “You just said _you_. But you’re going to be there, too. So, it’s we.”

To be honest, what Jaehyun wants to say to Taeyong is, of course he can afford to be confident—he would be too, if he’d gone first-fourth-first in the past few weeks, and not an abysmal tenth-twelfth-ninth. Even Mark, trading second and third back-and-forth with Donghyuck, would probably understand better. Jaehyun thinks he gets why Mark would prefer Donghyuck’s company to theirs.

“Just a slip of the tongue,” Jaehyun says lightly, waving his hand. “No need for the pep talk, nation’s center Lee Taeyong. I’ll see you at the top, you know that.”

And he will. But first, there is a secret he’s keeping from Taeyong.

What he remembers from ranking twelfth that one terrible week was how much he’d hated Taeyong’s hand on his arm afterwards, and the ease with which Mark had said, _it’s okay, hyung, you’ll do better_. He’d skipped dinner that night to lie in his bed, staring up at the speckled ceiling.

When the door opened, he was ready to play dead, or face his feelings and talk about them, depending on whether it was Taeyong or Mark. But instead it was Winwin, a paper napkin parcel in his hand.

“I noticed you left without eating,” he said, blinking up at Jaehyun in his top bunk. “So I swiped some kimbap for you.”

Jaehyun stared, then reached down to accept what Winwin was offering. “Thank you,” he said, suddenly realizing he was starving.

Winwin laid down on his own bunk, below Jaehyun’s. “Twelfth isn’t bad,” he finally said, after Jaehyun had politely inhaled his dinner.

“Fuck you, yes it is,” Jaehyun said, shocked into cursing. Winwin had ranked tenth.

A burst of laughter from the bunk below. _Ha!_ “You’re right, you’re right,” Winwin said, still giggling. “I don’t know why I said that. I would be pissed.”

“Damn straight,” Jaehyun said, before surprising himself with a laugh of his own. “Ah, I feel better,” he said, and realized it was true. “Thank you.”

Winwin hummed, the two of them companionably sharing the room’s silence.

It’s Jaehyun who spoke next. “It’s just,” he started, frustration simmering to a low boil inside him again. Call him entitled, but Jaehyun’s not used to not getting what he wants. “I was literally made to be an idol.”

Winwin laughed, then said something in Chinese. “Ego,” he offered as translation. “Confidence is good, though.”

“No, you don’t get it,” Jaehyun said, sitting up in his bed. Suddenly, it was very important to him that Winwin understood, and so he climbed down the ladder, perching on the edge of Winwin’s bunk where he could look at Winwin lying back against his pillows, arms crossed behind his head and a sliver of stomach showing where his pink sweater had ridden up. Jaehyun was struck with the desire to touch the soft part of Winwin’s belly that was peeking out. “I mean, I was _made_ to be an idol.”

 

 

 

Titanium joints. A layer of synthetic, anti-aging skin. Microchips embedded in their brains, providing them with perfect pitch, a photographic memory, and the ability to speak the language of whatever country they were in. New faces too, of course, but natural tweaks. Improvements upon the original, rather than a full renovation: a higher nose bridge, more symmetrical eyes, sharper jawline, a poutier mouth.

The doctor had been right after all. Jaehyun had recovered from the operation in record time, and was back in the practice rooms the following week.

“Hey,” Taeyong said when he saw him, eyes lighting up. “How do you feel?”

At home the night before, Jaehyun had spent hours online, searching up choreography routines he’d only ever admired, but knew he didn’t have the skill to pull off. In his closet mirror, he watched with wonder as his body hit all the beats, _1—2—3—_ , using techniques he’s never learned in his life, _—4—5—6._

“Like myself,” Jaehyun said, allowing himself to be pulled in for a hug. Which was the truth. He was still him, just better.

 

 

 

Winwin was silent for a long time after Jaehyun told him, eyes darting back between his face and the rest of his body, as if he would be able to tell by just looking that, underneath his clothes, Jaehyun was half-bionic. That Jaehyun was literally engineered to be the perfect idol, and still the best he could manage was twelfth.

Just as Jaehyun had worked himself halfway to panic, wondering if he shouldn’t have said anything after all, Winwin finally spoke. “Sicheng,” he said.

“What?” Jaehyun asked, wondering if he’d misheard.

“Dong Sicheng. That’s my real name. You don’t have to call me Winwin anymore.”

“Sicheng,” Jaehyun repeated slowly.

Sicheng smiled, his face new again. “Yes,” he said.

At that, Jaehyun reached out and finally did what he’d wanted, touching his fingers to the slight curve of Sicheng’s belly, full from dinner. Underneath, he could feel hard muscle and a powerful core, testament to the strength of Sicheng’s conviction and all of his hard work. As Sicheng breathed in and out, Jaehyun counted his breaths, regular and level, with him.

“Sicheng,” Jaehyun said, again. He found he couldn't help but repeat his name. He didn't want to stop. “Dong Sicheng.”

Jaehyun was looking at Sicheng’s face, so he felt rather than saw Sicheng’s left hand land on top of his. Sicheng threaded their fingers together, before giving their hands a squeeze. From Sicheng, it was as much of a gesture as any.

Sicheng had closed his eyes, the corners of his lips tugging up. He looked peaceful, like he was content to just be here, Jaehyun’s hand intertwined with his over his stomach.

When he spoke, it was to say, “And you will always be just Jaehyun to me.”

 

 

 

_And the trainee in rank seven of this season’s Produce 101… Jung Jaehyun. Congratulations!_

**Author's Note:**

> thank you dear [seungmin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/seungmin/) for the excellent source material ♡ i'm sorry that i took one (1) throwaway line about robots in your fic and came up with... this
> 
> [twitter](https://twitter.com/mouthkissed) / [cc](https://curiouscat.me/mouthkissed) ♡


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